Eat your veggies

These olives, tomatoes, onions and red peppers await their place of honor atop our suppertime pizza.

 

 Shutter speed: 1/60, f/2.2, ISO 400, 50mm (prime lens)

Alone

Many of the birds that visit the trees and feeders in our yard come in pairs. This little woodpecker always comes alone.

Taken through the window. Sharpened up in PS RAW.

Shutter: 1/250, f/6.3, ISO 400, focal length 270mm

Winter in Illinois

This high school sits on the river, just downstream from a dam. I've always enjoyed the geometric shapes in this castle-like structure. Contrasted again the frozen, turbulent state of the water, I think it's particularly striking.

Shutter priority (Tv). 1/250, f/11, ISO 200, focal length 77mm

The glass in class

My "Glass...redux" shots posted February 3 were an attempt to replicate this setup we learned about in my Lighting class last week, at a local camera store. Scroll down one post to see my efforts.

Click here to see the instructor's setup.

Glass...redux

Last week, in addition to the "Get to Know Your Rebel Class", some friends and I also took a Lighting class. One of the coolest things the instructor showed us was how to shoot glass. Clear glass presents a challenge because it's transparent. He reflected light off the glass and, with the help of a black background, shot some pretty cool images.

Here are a couple of my attempts to mimic his setup. I was using my light box, which is draped in a white sheet and has a white craft-paper "floor". I swapped out a black craft-paper floor and positioned it to also be a backdrop. Problem: It wouldn't stand up. I leaned it up against a tool box, but that caused a curve in the paper, which reflected more light. To fix that, I used the Dodge tool in Photoshop to darken up the reflected areas of the paper, while leaving the glass alone.

Also, I was dusting the glasses with paper towels..which left some streaks and dust motes. Next time, I'll take more care. A fun experiment!

Shutter: 1/100, f/4.5, ISO 1600, 55mm, hand-held, RAW. Only editing was to change the white balance to Tungsten (I forgot to do it in camera) and then use the Dodge tool as described above.

A party!

 

This third one, of the martini glass alone, is my favorite. I dropped the ISO speed down to 400, and switched off one of the side lights, which darkened the stem. It's straight out of the camera. Focal length 91mm. 1/100, f/5

One for Ron

Hey, Ron. As I was shooting this glass bottle, you came to mind for two reasons. This was shot with my 50mm prime lens...AND...look at the label!

Cheers!

Shutter speed 1/30, f4, ISO 100, hand held in my light box, aperture priority

Experiment in Exposure Compensation

Took a "get to know your digital Rebel" class at the local camera store this week. One button I'd not learned to play with was the Exposure Compensation button (the black & white A/V) These 2 images were taken of a classmate in the darkened room (only light was some leaking in from the partially open hallway door, and the light from the classroom projector, which was behind me). She was probably 10-12 feet away. I was pleasantly surprised at how much the image lightened up. With the level of zoom, I was at my lowest aperture setting and my highest ISO. Of course, if she had moved, it might have been a different story. Check out the slow shutter speeds! These were shot in Av (aperture priority) mode.